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Enhancing
conversation and deepening understanding
of the vocation of Christian scholarship at DBU
Strickland
212, 3:30 - 5:00pm
September
18 |
Abraham
Kuyper,
Lectures on Calvinism, “Calvinism & Science” |
October
7 |
George
Marsden,
Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, chps 1-2 |
November
3 |
George
Marsden,
Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, chps 3-4 |
December
9 |
George
Marsden,
Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, chps 5-6 |
“A
Calvinist [Christian] who seeks God, does not for a moment think of limiting
himself to theology and con-templation, leaving the other sciences, as
of a lower character, in the hands of unbelievers; but on the con-trary,
looking upon it as his task to know God in all his works, he is conscious
of having been called to fathom with all the energy of his intellect,
things terrestrial as well as things celestial; to open to view both the
order of creation, and the “common grace” of the God he adores
in nature and its wondrous character, in the production of human industry,
in the life of mankind, in sociology and in the history of the human race.”
—Abraham Kuyper, “Calvinism and Science” in Lectures
on Calvinism (Eerdmans, 1931), p. 125.
“I am advocating the opening of the academic mainstream to scholarship
that relates one’s belief in God to what else one thinks about.
Keeping within our intellectual horizons a Being who is great enough to
create us and the universe, after all, ought to change our perspectives
on quite a number of things. One might expect it to have a bearing on
some of the most sharply debated issues in academia today: How can we
find a basis for our most cherished moral judgments? Is power the only
means to decide what counts as ‘virtue’? How can we affirm
a pluralism that genuinely accepts others, without lapsing into relativism?
Can we know anything about reality that goes beyond our own socially determined
constructions? Are there any essential traits in the human character?
Is there any alternative to the fragmentation of the disciplines? What
should be the relationship among research, teaching, and other service.
What is the point of an academic career?”
—George M. Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship,
(Oxford, 1997), p. 4.
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